Fast-forward to today, and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is now pushing back that profitability date until 2015. Hesse still stands by his assertion that "carrying the iPhone will be quite profitable;" shareholders are just going to have to wait a bit longer than they originally envisioned.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

For anyone that questions Hesse's decision to make a deal with Apple, he simply tells them to take a look at embattled T-Mobile. T-Mobile recently announced that it would be laying off an additional 900 workers in the U.S. and has lost contract customers for 10 straight quarters.

T-Mobile is also the only one of America's "Big 4" wireless carriers that doesn't have the iPhone.

In other Sprint news, TechnoBuffalo has learned that the wireless carrier will end early upgrades for customers effective June 1. The program allowed customers to upgrade to a new phone within 10 to 14 days of their originally scheduled upgrade date.

Granted, waiting an extra two weeks isn't going to be a deal breaker for most people, so we doubt that many Sprint customers will cry themselves to sleep over this move.

T-mobile hasn't lost customers for 10 straight quarters because of iPhone. They've lost customers because they don't give a shit about their customers.

I switched to T-Mob 14 months ago from US Cellular (who I had for many years, but I wanted to save money with a family plan with my wife who had T-mob.)

I've had all major carriers except AT&T over the years, even Sprint about 10 years ago, and they kept screwing up my bill, a common practice for Sprint in the 2000-2005 era, so I left for US Cellular.

I've switched to Ting (who uses Sprints network) and couldn't be happier. I couldn't stay with my contract on T-mob any longer. Their customer support and coverage is all over the map here in Chicago. We moved in March and coverage in our condo (in the heart of the city) ranges from no signal to full signal. Nobody at T-mob can tell us whats going on, they denied the network being the problem, pushing us to buy new (unsubsidized) phones promising that'd resolve the problem, and it didn't. Calls drop constantly. Their customer support is awful, and when a call to them drops, they NEVER call back. The only good thing about T-mob is their "4G" network is pretty fast, but Ting/Sprint with WiMax is faster, so it's a moot point.